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Page 65
"Many happy returns of the day, Boots, old thing!"
Reggie burst rollickingly into song.
"I'm twenty-one today!
Twenty-one today!
I've got the key of the door!
Never been twenty-one before!
And father says I can do what I like!
So shout Hip-hip-hooray!
I'm a jolly good fellow,
Twenty-one today."
Lord Belpher scowled morosely.
"I wish you wouldn't make that infernal noise!"
"What infernal noise?"
"That singing!"
"My God! This man has wounded me!" said Reggie.
"I've a headache."
"I thought you would have, laddie, when I saw you getting away with
the liquid last night. An X-ray photograph of your liver would show
something that looked like a crumpled oak-leaf studded with
hob-nails. You ought to take more exercise, dear heart. Except for
sloshing that policeman, you haven't done anything athletic for
years."
"I wish you wouldn't harp on that affair!"
Reggie sat down on the bed.
"Between ourselves, old man," he said confidentially, "I also--I
myself--Reginald Byng, in person--was perhaps a shade polluted
during the evening. I give you my honest word that just after
dinner I saw three versions of your uncle, the bishop, standing in
a row side by side. I tell you, laddie, that for a moment I thought
I had strayed into a Bishop's Beano at Exeter Hall or the Athenaeum
or wherever it is those chappies collect in gangs. Then the three
bishops sort of congealed into one bishop, a trifle blurred about
the outlines, and I felt relieved. But what convinced me that I
had emptied a flagon or so too many was a rather rummy thing that
occurred later on. Have you ever happened, during one of these
feasts of reason and flows of soul, when you were bubbling over
with joie-de-vivre--have you ever happened to see things? What I
mean to say is, I had a deuced odd experience last night. I could
have sworn that one of the waiter-chappies was that fellow who
knocked off your hat in Piccadilly."
Lord Belpher, who had sunk back on to the pillows at Reggie's
entrance and had been listening to his talk with only intermittent
attention, shot up in bed.
"What!"
"Absolutely! My mistake, of course, but there it was. The fellow
might have been his double."
"But you've never seen the man."
"Oh yes, I have. I forgot to tell you. I met him on the links
yesterday. I'd gone out there alone, rather expecting to have a
round with the pro., but, finding this lad there, I suggested that
we might go round together. We did eighteen holes, and he licked
the boots off me. Very hot stuff he was. And after the game he took
me off to his cottage and gave me a drink. He lives at the cottage
next door to Platt's farm, so, you see, it was the identical
chappie. We got extremely matey. Like brothers. Absolutely! So you
can understand what a shock it gave me when I found what I took to
be the same man serving bracers to the multitude the same evening.
One of those nasty jars that cause a fellow's head to swim a bit,
don't you know, and make him lose confidence in himself."
Lord Belpher did not reply. His brain was whirling. So he had been
right after all!
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